Turtle Lake

My sense of smell is above average, for humans. The dogs still have me beat, and I envy them for that, but the typical human can’t even shake a stick at my sense of smell. I’m not trying to turn this into a competition, but hands down, I win. I am the champion. Sometimes being the winner doesn’t bring you happiness though. One smell that I will never forget brought me to tears. It literally made me cry like a little five year old. I should add that I was five years old at the time.

My family was going on vacation to Florida. The year was 1987, and we were piled into the car for the two or three day drive; because Dad refused to fly. The most famous plane crash of his time completely turned him off the thought of flying. You know the one, with Buddy Holly, The Big Bopper, Richie Valens, and if there was another big star, then I feel bad that I forget them every time I refer to “The Day that Music Died”.

It was a drive where the question of, “Are we almost there?” can even start to annoy the kid asking the question. Every once in a while, we would have to pass over a lake, by means of bridge. It was a very uneventful happening, except for one time. There was one lake that we had to cross and the memory of that will never leave me.

It is said that smell is the strongest sense tied to memory. I know that I have smelled a flower in the tropics of Asia that made me immediately say “Florida”. My worst smell memory is of a little lake on the way to Florida, named Turtle Lake. As we were crossing over Turtle Lake, I began to complain about the horrible smell. It was a rancid stench that is almost indescribable. It was not like the horrible smells I was familiar with. It was not like feces, or methane, or sulpher. It was not even the smell of death, which I didn’t discover for another three years. It is the most unique horrible smell I have ever encountered.

After about sixty seconds of passing over Turtle Lake, I broke down into full on tears. It was a smell so terrible, I cried and begged for it to be over. To this day, if I say “Turtle Lake” to my brother, he will get a shudder, but then laugh about how horrible the smell was. The smell was so bad it is actually laughable. So like many things, my superior sense of smell is a blessing and a curse, and Turtle Lake, I will never forget you.